NYT: Gaza War Worked

Isabel Kershner writes a piece in the New York Times (10/9/09) that starts out as a profile of an Israeli artist who makes flowers out of Qassam rocket pieces. The main point, though, is to discuss thechanged reality in southern Israel, thanks to the invasion of the Gaza Strip late last year that killed over 1,000 Palestinians:

Israel said its three-week offensive was intended to change the reality in the south. Since January, when the military campaign ended, the rocket fire has significantly fallen off and residents here are trying to accustom themselves to a kind of normalcy amid the lingering uncertainty and fear.

This recycles the myth that rocket fire was a constant barrage until the war changed all that– a point Kershner makes more explicitly later:

According to the Israeli military, some 3,300 rockets and mortar shells were launched from Gaza at southern Israel in 2008, compared with fewer than 300 since the end of the war.

This is highly misleading; much of that rocket fire came at the end of the year– after the invasion and bombing of Gaza was underway. In fact, a negotiated peace prevailed for much of the middle of 2008–which is something that you would have learned if you were a careful reader of the New York Times.Right before the invasion, the paper (12/19/08) reported that much of 2008 was quiet:

Israeli and United Nations figures show that while more than 300 rockets were fired into Israel in May, 10 to 20 were fired in July, depending on who was counting and whether mortar rounds were included. In August, 10 to 30 were fired, and in September, 5 to 10.

Rocket fire increased significantlyin November after Israel attacked a Hamas tunnel and killed six militants. For a graphic understanding of the rate of rocket/mortar fire, see this (which is based on Israeli figures).

The more natural lesson to draw is that negotiations work better than violence. This is apparentlynot what the New York Times wants you to believe, though they did once report that reality. Perhaps it was an accident.

Activism Director and and Co-producer of CounterSpinPeter Hart is the activism director at FAIR. He writes for FAIR's magazine Extra! and is also a co-host and producer of FAIR's syndicated radio show CounterSpin. He is the author of The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly (Seven Stories Press, 2003). Hart has been interviewed by a number of media outlets, including NBC Nightly News, Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday and the Associated Press. He has also appeared on Showtime and in the movie Outfoxed. Follow Peter on Twitter at @peterfhart.

The reason Operation Cast Lead didn’t work is because Israel didn’t finish the job. But the best solution for peace in the Middle East is for the Arab countries to take in the Palestinians. The West Bank and Gaza are both Israeli land. If an Arab diplomat drove through the West Bank and Gaza with a truckload of immigration visas free for the asking, both regions would be empty overnight! The Arab world has millions of square miles of wide-open space. Israel is a tiny wedge-shaped country that’s half desert. Forcing Israel to make peace with brainwashed, semi-literate Palestinians who want every Jew, Christian, Israeli and American dead is asking the impossible.

The international outcry over Israel’s defensive/retaliatory actions is woefully disproportionate to what Israel has actually done, whereas the international outcry over the offensive/provocative actions of Hamas and Hezbollah has been nonexistent. And who are the Islamic extremists that they would dictate to us who our allies should be? Oil is their most powerful weapon at the negotiating table…until we figure out a way to turn the tables on them. It can be done.

Well, unfortunately for the Israelis, those brainwashed, semi-literate Palestinians are humans, which gives them certain inalienable rights under international law. This means they can’t be subjected to collective punishment [1] or displaced by Israeli settlers [2]. Also, it turns out that Israel does not legally own the West Bank or Gaza [3], and the majority of Palestinians support the two-state solution [4]

All that’s wrong with the world can be summed up in people like Heather. Haters are so hardened that their hearts cannot be penetrated. They have been brainwashed all their lives, and hate is all they know. Unfortunately for them, they are building up such massive amounts of karma, that they will be miserable for many years to come, unless something shocks them into awareness. I pray to God that these hateful people will soon wake up!

Heather Czerniak is talking about Christians & Americans like she cares !
People like you Ms. Heather are the main reason behind all the misery and
the suffering of the whole region.I am wondering! what happened to
” NEVER AGAIN ? ” The Palestinians of today are the Jews of yesterday.
What Hitler & the Nazi did to the Jews Israel are doing the same exact
things to the Palestinians.SHAME ON YOU! Do you really believe
“The reason Operation Cast Lead didn’t work is because Israel didn’t finish the job ????
what whould any Jew feel if someone said the same thing about Hitler & the Jews ? Zionists are the enemies of the Jews period .

Massimo, you are another who has made the horrible false claim that Israel is doing the same thing to the Palestinians that the Nazis did to the Jews. That statement is so evil that I can hardly type because my hands are shaking. But I’ll try. Let’s look at the facts (something you ought to try once in awhile):
Hitler became the world’s foremost Jew hater for no apparent reason. The Jews had not done anything to bring this hatred on. When he took power, he used the Jews as scapegoats for everything wrong in the world, using accusations that have been made against the Jews forever. It was easy then to get the Germans, much of Europe, and the Arabs to go along with his systemic torture, starvation, and murder of 1/3 of the Jews in the world and the vast majority of Jews in every European country they took over. Hamas, on the other hand, is a group that has as its main goal, to destroy Israel, and to kill Jews. Read its covenant if you don’t believe me–it’s all in print. Hamas has engineered hundreds of suicide bombings against Israel, killing anyone who might be on the bus or in the restaurant at the time, be they Jew, Arab, or other. They have fired thousands of rockets against civilian targets in Israel since Israel withdrew from Gaza. Israel tried to make a peaceful gesture (the withdrawal), and this is how they were repaid. Hamas will never negotiate peace with Israel because the very purpose of Hamas is to destroy Israel. They are not shy about saying so, either. Hamas’ hatred of Israel and Jews comes from an ages-old hatred of Jews by Muslims. Meanwhile, Israel acted against Hamas because Hamas attacked them over and over again;
nothing more.The world accuses Israel of targeting civilians, which is patently false. If they did such a horrible thing, why did Israel drop leaflets all over Gaza and send Gazans text messages warning them of where they were going to attack? You can’t ignore this fact. All civilian deaths of Gazans occurred because Hamas hid amongst civilians when they launched their attacks. And when Heather said Israel should have finished the job, it means something entirely different than when Jew haters say the Hitler should have finished the job (which they say quite often). What Heather meant is that Israel should have continued until Hamas ceased to exist, not, God forbid, the Palestinian people. And maybe you’ve noticed that the Jews could have easily wiped out every Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza. In fact, if Israel was guilty of 1/10 of what people like you accuse them of, there would be no Palestinians alive anywhere in the world.

Look at the situation in the West Bank. The economy of the West Bank is doing very well right now, even during a worldwide recession. Why? Because Fatah has stopped attacking Israel. This is partially because the separation barrier makes attacks much more difficult to carry out than they were before and partially because of true efforts by Palestinian police to keep the peace, Israel has, because of the more peaceful conditions, been able to dismantle checkpoints and ease many of the restrictions that were choking the West Bank. Now Fatah hasn’t made any real concessions to Israel. They refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. They still insist on any settlement including a law of return that would allow Palestinian Arabs to become citizens of Israel, which is a way to destroy Israel from within. They refuse to renounce violence in the future. But solely because of the lack of violence now, Israel has been able to ease the restrictions, which has made life easier for West Bank Palestinians.

Tell me, Massimo, did you condemn Palestinians for launching rockets against civilians in Israel? Did you condemn Palestinians for sending children to blow themselves up on crowded buses? If you did, you are one of the few. Where were the young English women who stood in front of Palestinian rocket shooters? What do you suppose would happen to a foreigner who would stand in the way of a Hamas bombmaker?

Roy, you claim that the majority of Palestinians support a 2-state solution. Is that why they elected Hamas? And as I said before, their idea of a 2-state solution is to allow millions of Arabs to move to Israel, which is clearly designed to destroy Israel from within.

Will Ware, you accuse Heather of promoting ethnic cleansing. Heather proposed offering Palestinians free passage and resettlement to Arab countries, whereas Hamas proposes killing every Israeli. Apparently, you think ethnic cleansing is OK as long as it takes the form of violence against the Jews.

Regina, you think like Will Ware–Heather doesn’t hate Palestinians. She is not brainwashed. She is looking at the facts–that Palestinians will never agree to a true peace with Israel. It is you who are brainwashed because you accuse Israel’s defenders of hatred while ignoring every crime committed by the Arabs. Hamas’s suicide bombings and rockets are perfectly OK with you. That is not hatred. Only Jews’ attempt to defend themselves is considered hatred to you. Why don’t you read the anti-Jewish venom that comes out of every Arab newspaper and news broadcast? Then you’ll see what true hatred is.

Finally, it is not drastically important how many rockets Hamas launched against Israel. The fact is that the rockets never stopped falling on southwestern Israel, causing continuing terror among Israelis in the area. Israelis couldn’t exactly mothball their bomb shelters. This is the Palesinian version of a truce–cutting down on the terrorism. The article by Mr. Hart made a lot of the smaller numbers of attacks by Hamas. Oh, how nice of them. Meanwhile, they were stockpiling more weapons from Iran to use against Israel when the time was appropriate. And no one ever counts planned attacks that are foiled by Israel–they apaprently don’t count. The 12/19/08 article cited by Hart accuses Israel of attacking Hamas prior to
Operation Cast Lead just to break the truce. But Israel’s actions were taken solely to stop Hamas from perpetrating attacks. Again, self-defense isn’t something that Israel is entitled to.

You miss the fact that Jews were hated or scape goats for Christians in Europe for centuries. If it weren’t for the Moslems and a Polish king Casimir I the Jews would have been eradicated from Europe during the Black Death in the 14th century. Something they were blamed for. Look it up some time won’t you?

Israel is entitled to self defense as much as the Palestinians aren’t they? How about control over their land, like the Palestinians? Yes or no? Do the Lebonese count either as sovereign , Heather and Joel? Do you condemn the Israelis for their transgressions of international law as you do for the Palestinians? I do. Are you consistent with this? Without it you are just partisan cheer leaders allowing criminal acts by you friends to go unannounced and unpunished. All must be all the same level. The Palestinians are the unter-mensch in this scenario. If a person is abused and not treated they too can become a like abuser. It can happen to groups as well. Some in the Israeli gov’t will use violent and cruel means to get their own lebensraum for their heligstatd for themselves as long as it takes. If war should break out they will get to their final solution of removing the Palestinians by any means and very fast. Dead or alive they will finally be removed. The fog of war will cover that infamy to come.

The statement “The more natural lesson to draw is that negotiations work better than violence” is not supported by anything in the article or in any reality of the last half century.

This may be a hopeful dream in the author’s head, but after living in the Middle East, let me enlighten Westerners:

1. In that part of the world Negotiation is not a word that can be tied to Oxford Union debates or policy discussions over tea.
2. Many decades of very bad blood between Arabs and Jews was proceeded by many centures of bad blood between Arabs and the West.
3. Neither “negotiations”nor “peace” are primary objectives of Arabs or Jews. These are entirely Western constructs. Every family on each side has been wronged at one time or other and takes pride in not forgetting that.

Therefore, the much more “natural lesson”of the Gaza offensive and macro situation is that it would be unlikely there will be negotiations leading to true resolution–in our lifetime or beyond.

Once again the Israeli propaganda/misinformation machine is at work. One of these days, they’re gonna lie so much they’re not going to be able to get themselves out of their own lie and all of their screams of anti-semitism and Holocaust(TM) ain’t gonna help ‘em.

Israel always says that negotiation with Palestinians is impossible until the Palestinians declare that they recognize Israel’s right to exist. Israel is never required to declare that the Palestinians have the same right.